Introduction

The chapter introduces an unique way of studying Being from outside the traditional prism of ontology. Asethetic and ethical approaches of studying beauty and goodness become both the method and the content of articulating Being in the indigenous worldviews. In addition, the chapter highlights the importance of studying two forms of marginality, one, aesthetics and ethics as disciplines, and two, women’s agency. Aesthetic and ethical articulations are often seen as highly subjective, and thus cannot provide objective and universal conditions for our knowledge about the self and the world. The two domains have been brought out of their marginal status and engaged as foundational discourses in our understanding the world. The other marginality in the domain of agency is that of the women. Agency of the women as an inseparable counterpart of men in any discourse on agency, as conceived in the indigenous life world, has also been studied. Contrary to the discourses of “gender-binary” or “gender contradiction”, the indigenous world is marked by the playfulness of the male and the female principles as forces complimenting one another. Further, the research problematizes the stereotypes of seeing the dichotomy of the insider versus the outsider as structural foundation that divides the indigenous communities from the non-indigenou. Representation of “who is an insider” and “who is an outsider” is often marked by the context rather than a definitive representation, showing that identity is highly fluid.